


Coke Bottles & Romance Novels

by spinsterclaire



Category: Outlander (TV), Outlander Series - Diana Gabaldon
Genre: Bedtime stories for a scandalized JAMMF, Diana Gabaldon, Family Fluff, Romance, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-07
Updated: 2017-07-25
Packaged: 2018-08-20 02:24:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8232818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spinsterclaire/pseuds/spinsterclaire
Summary: Newly returned to Fraser's Ridge, Brianna brings her parents gifts from the 20th century. Everyone gets overexcited about Coca-Cola, Claire cries over some Hershey's chocolate, and Jamie discovers all sorts of euphemisms for sex.





	1. Chapter 1

**June, 1779 – Fraser’s Ridge**  

“I’ve come bearing gifts!” Bree announced, prancing into the kitchen.

Jamie and I looked up – me, from my sewing and Jamie, from the scrubbing of his boots – to find our daughter withdrawing several packages from a suspiciously large bag. I had seen it slung over her shoulder the previous day, a big, hulking mass whose contents promised either a year’s worth of goods or a third grandchild. The entire thing came alive whenever jostled too roughly – bulging in odd places, echoing with strange clankings – though my joke was met with a cryptic, “You’ll see.”

“ _20th century_ gifts _,_  I might add,” Bree admitted. Her smile widened as she placed the presents before us, one of which resonated with the tell-tale clinking of aluminum. Guessing what was contained therein, the ghost of a sugary fizz danced on my tongue.

Since Bree and Roger’s arrival, we’d scarcely had a moment to breathe, so consumed with the general business of accommodating four extra bodies. Conversation was cut short by early bedtimes, as Bree, Roger, and the children fell asleep in whichever cranny caught them at their most exhausted. I’d found Jem just this morning, sprawled in front of the hearth, lying as still as the dead. Luckily, he wasn’t – dead, that is – but merely tuckered out by the homeward journey.

Traveling through time will do that to a person.

“Gifts!” Mandy cried now. She sped out from behind her mother and eyed the spread of packages. “Birfday?”

There were six total, each wrapped in sheets of old newspaper. Not  _old_  by our standards, I amended quickly, spotting “April 23, 1981” in an upper corner. I nearly yelped at the sight of the photographs – their rich (colored!) pigments; the people all coiffed and rouged, preserved in a moment two hundred years from now. Fine typography flooded the pages – the product of a typewriter, I knew, and not a printing press.

I snatched one of the packages and brought it closer for inspection. The feel of it – that grimy, thin paper – and the smell, too, uncovered a well of memories from fifteen-odd years before. Bree, just a child, drinking Ovaltine as I skimmed the  _Boston Globe_ before work _._ I could hardly remember the headlines of those days, but that image of my daughter, the radio blaring Elvis Presley, and the rustle of pages seemed to manifest in our 18th century home.

I sighed and smiled.

“The colors…” Jamie breathed, looking over my shoulder. He grabbed a package for himself, turning it upside down, then right side up in awe. “Sassenach, d’ye see this?”

“ _Grannie’s_  birfday?” Mandy asked again. I set my bundle down – “First Launching of Space Shuttle”, the wrapping proclaimed in bold-faced letters – and pulled Mandy onto my lap. She was warm to the touch, the vestiges of her deep, childish sleep still clinging to her skin. I sighed a second time.

 _Thank God_ , I thought.  _Thank God._

“Not Grannie’s birthday,” Bree chimed in. She ruffled Mandy’s hair as she crossed the room and fetched herself a biscuit. Roger appeared at her side, and Jem – so tousled as to seem newly risen from his grave – soon followed suit.

Mandy’s curls were the spitting image of mine, a dark, untamable beast that swallowed her mother’s hand. Beyond guilt for having passed on the Beauchamp hair – a burden, truth be told, especially in the sodden, Scottish weather of her home – I felt a warmth surge through me. ( _Thank God. Thank God_.)

Being of an age where repetition lent itself to understanding, Mandy said, rather forlornly. “ _Not_ Grannie’s birthday?”

“Fortunately not, darling,” I replied. Though Mandy was a tiny thing, I could feel the weight of her already taking its toll, a physical affirmation that I was damn well old enough if my body had anything to say about it.

“Mandy,” Bree asked between mouthfuls of biscuit, “do you know how old Grannie would be if it _was_  her birthday?”

My granddaughter shook her head, and I repeated her mother’s gesture, mussing her curls with an affectionate hand. “Good, then. Let’s keep it that way, shall we?”

Jamie chuckled and leaned towards us.

“If ye must know, yer Grannie is as auld as – ”

I gave my husband a pointed look, but he wasn’t deterred. Instead, he scooted closer, pinched my waist, and kissed me – to the groaning disapproval of our audience.

“Nay, I suppose she’s no’  _that_  old. No’ much older than me at least – and I dinna fancy myself to be ancient just yet. Although,” He dropped his voice to a low whisper, removing his arm from my shoulder to cover both eyes. Mandy shrieked with delight as Jamie stood, bumping into furniture and doorframes with mocking shrieks of pain. “She’s as blind as a bat without her wee specs! Canna see a thing!”

“A bat!” Mandy squealed, hopping down from my lap. “A bat!”

“Indeed,” I replied, grinning despite myself. “If only I  _had_  a bat – then I might use it on your Grandda here. Say, Bree, does a Louisville Slugger happen to be in one of these packages?”

“ _Ach_!” Roger cried from the sink, slapping a palm to his forehead. “I ken we’d forgotten something! Next time I pop back to 1981, I’ll be sure to bring ye a Louisville Slugger, Claire.”

“That’s quite all right, Roger.” I smirked at my husband, now returned to his seat. “I’m afraid it’d take more than a whack on the head to knock some sense into this one.”

“God knows she’s been doing that for  _years_ ,” Jamie replied, still speaking to Mandy. “And I dinna think it’s done a bit of good. D’ye reckon there’s anything in here,  _a nighean_?” He bowed his head, and Mandy obligingly knocked on his skull, knuckle and bone meeting with an affirmatory thud.

“Brain!” Mandy cried, then frowned as she shook her hand. “Ouchy brain.”

“Will ye no’ open the gifts before breakfast gets cold?” Jem asked, sitting down across from us. His plea was addressed to Jamie more than I, blue eyes shining hungrily for his grandfather’s approval. I recognized that look – I’d seen it in Fergus, in Young Ian, in any young male, really, who encountered the impressive person of my husband James Fraser. I felt a pang in my chest at the memories of those boys’ faces – all men now, all grown. But alive and well.

 _Thank God,_ I thought again. _Thank God._

Jamie nodded and pushed the cluster of gifts in my direction. “Best leave the mystery of my ‘ouchy brain’ for later. Will ye do the honors, Sassenach?” 

“Gladly.” I relished the easy tear of the newspaper as I ripped through “World News”. Beside me, I heard Jamie joke to Mandy, “If there  _was_  a bat in there, ye’d tell me so, aye?”

But what lay beneath was no Louisville Slugger, but a small box of Coca-Cola – the source of the clinking aluminum. I gasped and opened the flips of cardboard, the two cans within inspiring another gleeful shriek. Jamie remained non-plussed by the gift itself, more taken by the shimmer of red aluminum than anything else. That, and the small strips of tape now being applied to both his nose and mouth (“Amanda Claire Mackenzie,  _what_  have ye just stuck to my face?”)

“Bree! “You didn’t!”

“I did.”

“However did you manage?”

“It wasna easy, I’ll tell ye that,” Roger replied, his voice mirroring Bree’s prideful smile. “Careful when ye open them, mind – wouldn’t be surprised if they explode when ye do. Bit of a bumpy ride here.”

I snorted. “I’ll say.”

Jem spoke confidentially to Jamie, one hand shielding the right side of his mouth.

“Grandda, be sure to try one ‘fore Mam gets to them, otherwise there’ll be none left.” An inept whisperer, Jem had to duck from his mother’s swatting palm, though Brianna had purposely overestimated the distance. In a maneuver not unlike one of my own, she took Jem’s moment of discomposure to kiss the top of his head.

“Another, Grannie! Another!” Mandy bounced on Jamie’s lap. He, meanwhile, still fiddled with the tape, winding and unwinding it around his fingers.

I moved to the smaller, flatter package just beside the Coco-Cola’s. It felt strangely pliant in my hands – liquid but not quite. Clay, almost. But the minute I unearthed it from its wrappings, I knew exactly what its contents held.

“Bree…”

In what was likely the most ridiculous response to Hershey’s chocolate, I cried out and clutched the bar to my chest. Jamie moved forwards, brows knitted with concern, but at Bree’s poorly suppressed hilarity, he finally cracked his own smile.

“Sassenach,” he said, and I could hear the laughter bubbling in his throat. “I dinna mean to poke fun, but…are ye crying over a wee rectangle of chocolate?”

I was.

“I’m sorry,” I said, swiping at my damp cheeks. I tried laughing to cover my embarrassment but managed only another wail, all strangled and phlegmy. “I don’t know why I’m…It’s just…it’s…I really love chocolate,” I finished lamely. But upon reading the candy wrapper’s fine print, I wept aloud again. “Oh  _God_ , it has  _almonds_ , too.”

The entire room hooted with laughter, and Bree ran around the table to hug me. She kissed my temple, arms tangled around my neck, and whispered, “I’m glad you’re happy, Mama. Sorry they’re a little melted.”

“ _Sorry_?” I croaked, still the blubbering idiot. “It’s – they’re perfect. Thank you.”

“I’ve been married to this woman for nigh on thirty years, and I dinna think she’s ever been so happy to see  _me_.” Jamie teased (a flat out lie, we both knew) and rubbed my back.

Mandy was the only one still concerned for my welfare, as she promptly dismounted from Jamie’s lap to offer comfort. She beckoned me towards her, taking my face between her palms, and kissed my forehead. A gesture, no doubt, she’d often received herself, following any playground scrapes or night terrors.

“No sad, Grannie!” she commanded, her small, cherubic face hovering inches from my own. Up close, I could see the resemblance between us, and the shadows of my own mother lying somewhere in those amber eyes. “We’re home now!”

Naturally, this statement only made things worse, and I continued to (tearfully) stammer apologies and exclamations of gratitude. Meanwhile, the others grew increasingly discomfited by my distress, probably thinking my “auld age” had turned me nothing short of senile.

It went without saying that my tears were not for the chocolate bar itself. Rather, I cried simply for what it meant. Only Bree would know these were my favorite, so many evenings spent just the two of us, breaking off squares of chocolate as we watched  _Gone with the Wind_.

 _Home_ , just as Mandy had said. My family, returned to me at last – and thus, the half-empty home of my heart made complete.

_Thank God. Thank God._

“Perhaps I should handle the rest of them, aye?” Jamie said, patting my hand gently. He seemed endeared, if not slightly perplexed, by this volatile reaction to 20th century candy. For this reason alone, he earned his place back in my good graces – despite the jabs at my advancing age – and I nodded.

“Ten pounds sterling for that performance, everyone,” I managed to joke. Roger was only too happy to indulge me, whistling loudly through his fingers while Jem clapped. Mandy, catching onto the excitement (though misunderstanding the jest herself), shouted, “Yay, Grannie!”

Jamie cleared his throat. “Now, let’s see if I canna get through the rest wi’out tears…” (Mandy: “You can do it, Grandda!”)

Much to everyone’s relief, he succeeded, though a considerable amount of time was spent explaining the function of Scotch tape. Among the other gifts were three rolls of toilet paper (for Ian and more for posterity than anything), a pack of lighters (received with a gimlet but enchanted eye on Jamie’s behalf), and an array of modern medicines.  _How_  they’d carried such goods – much less brought them through the stones undamaged – was beyond me, but I was still too overwhelmed for questions. Logistics hardly mattered when a bottle of Tylenol materialized in one’s kitchen in 1779.

As everyone took turns fiddling with the lighters, nibbling chocolate, and taking sips of Coke –  _ah_ , the satisfying hiss of an opened soda can! – Bree suddenly exclaimed:

“Oh! I almost forgot!” Rummaging inside her bag once more, she finally emerged with a well-worn paperback. She glanced sideways at the children and, very judiciously, kept the cover from their sight before extending it to me. “This is for you, Mama – Joe sends his love.”

At the mention of my friend, I leapt from my seat and laughed, knowing full well what sort of gift Joe Abernathy would pass along. Typical Joe, sending me a dog-earred and annotated Harlequin romance novel. The cover, I confirmed, was not for the tender-hearted, but it certainly received Jamie’s undivided interest.

“And they nearly arrested  _me_  for printing seditious materials?” he cried, craning his neck for a better view. His cheeks were inflamed, but his eyes never left the buxom, barely-clad heroine. “What is  _that_?”

“ _That_ ,” I replied, “is an example of fine 20th century literature.”

“Book!” Mandy said. “Read, Grannie, read!”

“Afraid I can’t, little one,” I told her, tucking Joe’s gift beneath my armpit. “You wouldn’t be interested in this sort of book anyways.”

“What sort of book,  _is it_ , Grannie?” Jem goaded, a smirk on his face. Again, a swatting palm soared towards him, though it was Roger’s this time and not quite so off the mark. (“Ye wee gomerel.”)

“No bedtime story,” Mandy lamented, and her fallen expression compelled me to reach for her. I picked her up – with not a little struggle – and assured her she’d have her fair share of stories more suitable to time-traveling princesses. This seemed to placate her, though she watched me as I slid the book beneath my thigh.

“She’s right,  _a nighean_ ,” Jamie agreed. “Bedtime stories like  _that_  – those are for me and –”

He paused, remembering his company, and blushed profusely.

Jem snickered.

Roger became enamored with the floorboards.

Brianna rolled her eyes. “I would say you two should get a room, but that seems like encouragement I’m not willing to give.”

“Don’t bother, anyways,” Roger mumbled. “I dinna think they  _need_  yer encouragement.”

“We’ll just…put this away for later.” I demurred, peeking up at Jamie through my lashes. “Now, how about that Coca-Cola?”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh boy, it's been a while.

My husband was a cultured man—a learned man, for all that, having received his education in universities, on battlefields, in the peaks of the Scottish Highlands and backcountry America. At 58, the iron cast of his world had been set, the lines of truth or falsehood drawn by his experiences—as concrete as a stone in his hands.

Ships were “evil vessels in alliance wi’ Satan.” Drunken men, while generally disagreeable, could be, “Easy money, aye?” for their generosity with information. The sky was blue, the grass was green, and if one could lend a helping hand, then it was one’s duty to do so.

Sex, too, had its own particular shape in his mind, though he (thank God) no longer took his cues from animals.

But of course, the world did not revolve around the beliefs of Jamie Fraser, however solid he might find them. As it turned out, ships were essential to the trade market, and drunken men were often liars. The sky was certainly blue and the grass certainly green, but I rather thought a distinction should be made between “helping” and “meddling.”

And sex—well. There was no defining that.

As if to prove this final point,  _Sacred Pleasure_ ’s protagonists were performing acrobatics. Their boneless limbs had effortlessly folded and twisted, then disappeared altogether (“Wasn’t her leg just around his torso?”).

Jamie was vibrating beside me, questioning everything from the author’s diction (“ _Conquered_ her lips?”) to the logistical implications of sex in a closet.

“Sassenach,” he said, “you ken well how it is in a ship cabin! Ye canna expect me to believe that—”

“Hush!” I retorted, swatting away his protestations. “You can’t just interrupt a woman’s  _heaving bosom_.”

I cleared my throat, and read on.

> “Consume me, Rodney. Here.  _Now_.”

“Aye, if he’s a snake, maybe,” Jamie grumbled, and I rolled my eyes.

“Perhaps Rodney and Harriet are quite flexible. And double-jointed, and—”

“Former members of the traveling circus?”

“Precisely.” I replied. “Now. Where were we?”

“Harriet’s consumption, Sassenach.”

“Ah. Yes.”

> Harriet took a deep breath and pulled his surgical trousers down. She had never been so bold with a man, and it thrilled her.
> 
> Rodney recaptured her lips as she took his silky steel rod in her hand.
> 
> God, he was big!
> 
> He grasped her love jugs, and her nipples exploded with delight.

“Nay, it doesna say that!” Jamie cried, moving forward to snatch the book from my hands. “Yer making it up!”

Rather absorbed in the story myself, I evaded his swipe and reread the paragraph, pointing at the evidence with a poorly concealed smirked.

“I most certainly am not! It says it right here: ‘He grasped her love jugs, and her nipples exploded with delight.’”

Still disinclined to believe me, Jamie pried the book from my gasp, eyes moving quickly along the lines of text. At last, and with a grunt of contempt, it was confirmed that Harriet’s breasts were, indeed, of a particularly volatile sort. With a loud exhale through his teeth, Jamie took over the reading.

> “You drive me mad, Harriet!” Rodney groaned, his quivering member pulsing in her hand.  
> 
> He bucked his hips against her, and she let him go, eager to feel that length in her wet depths.
> 
> “Oh Rodney!” she screamed as he drove into her clunge, cleaving her. Her body opened to his love dart like a soft pink flower.

“Whoa-ho!” I snorted. “I wonder, which is better: a ‘quivering member’ or a ‘love dart’?”

“I’m partial to ‘clunge’ myself, Sassenach,” Jamie replied, though I thought his expression much more serious than Harriet’s ‘clunge’ deserved. Using his thumb as a place-marker, he studied the cover, scratching at his stubbled chin. “Is this really what ye read? Is this how lassies in yer time learn about—”

“I read the books for  _entertainment_ , Jamie. After all, you didn’t get your sexual expertise from  _Fanny Hill_ , did you?” I said, brow raised and hand crawling towards his leg. One finger, two fingers tapping against his thigh in silent suggestion. “That just comes with practice.”

“Aye, practice, aye,” he said, only half-listening.

To be fair, the author of  _Sacred Pleasure_  was rather…inventive with her descriptions of the human anatomy and sexual intercourse. It had more than earned its rightful place in Joe’s pantheon of romance novels, and I wondered if it was pilfered from the hospital’s collection or his own.

Brows knitted, Jamie reopened the book and turned the page.

“Hey!” I said. “Don’t read ahead.”

“I’m no’ reading ahead, Sassenach.” Jamie leaned back, rubbing his index fingers in slow circles against his temples. “I’m trying to imagine it. D’ye think it’s even possible to make a woman’s nipples explode?”

“Where there’s a will, there’s a way.”

Jamie regarded me sideways, a grin beginning to stretch across his face.

“And d’ye wish I had the will for that, Sassenach?”

“Not _that_  particularly, no. Though if you do, I’m sure I could muster some gratitude for the effort. Not sure my nipples could though. Having been blown to bits and all.”

Jamie looked at the far wall, tilted his head. I found his thoughtful silence somewhat disconcerting (and my nipples did too, to be honest), but decided not to dwell on the images probably flashing through my husband’s mind. I brought the book closer to my nose and continued to read.

> “Harriet! Harriet, my one true passion!” Rodney called out, gasping as his body convulsed with love.
> 
> He rested his forehead against hers for a moment, and then pulled away. “I must leave now. I have a surgery.”

“Well, I hope he washes his hands,” I snorted.

“Aye, dinna want her exploded nipples to cause an—” Jamie paused, searching for one of my words, “infection.”

> Harriet’s shock was cut off with a hot, heavy kiss. “Stay here. I’ll be back.”

“Is it so different, then, where ye come from?” Jamie asked me then, voice reflective and distant.

I left Harriet and Rodney to their post-coital tension, only to find my husband’s intent stare.

“Why, yes…” I began, slowly, hesitantly. Quite frazzled by the look in Jamie’s eyes. “The fundamentals are the same, of course. We’re all anatomically identical, whether we’re from here or there. Of course, some are more, err,  _well-endowed_  than others…” I paused, dropping my eyes to let him know he was, in fact, one of the blessed. “But we’ve all got the same parts in the same places. Unless 18 century men have sprouted an extra organ in my absence.”

“If you’d kept at yer tonics and potions after the Rising, Sassenach, I’ve no doubt you’d have given someone an extra ball, at least.”

“If it were that easy, I should think I’d have every male tenant knocking at my door.”

All at once, a fact of memory struck me. This happened occasionally, as I recalled certain events and places of my past—natch, my future—that would have no meaning for those in my present century. I laughed to myself, and Jamie moved closer.

“Something funny?”

“Nothing,” I said, still stifling a giggle. “It’s only, just—where I come from, there are means of…male enhancement. For those who aren’t as endowed as the others.”

Jamie’s eyes widened in disbelief.

“An aphrodisiac ye mean?”

“No, not quite. Aphrodisiacs enhance sensation. I mean…the physical size of your, err…”

Despite the myriad of terms at my fingertips, sexual eloquence seemed to be failing me. “The penis. But the instrument I’m referring to is called—well, you can’t laugh, Jamie.”

“A man’s cock is never a laughing matter, Sassenach. Verra sensitive, they.” He rubbed a hand over his jaw. “An instrument, ye say? That doesna sound verra nice.”

I wrinkled my nose, recalling the strange contraptions as I’d seen them: once, in a catalogue meant for the neighbors. And another time, photographs brandished at a faculty party after too much drink. All steel and hard lines.

Jamie was right—hardly an invitation for the so-called ‘sensitive.’

“It’s called a penis pump. Throughout the first half of the 20th century, they were used strictly for medicinal purposes. To help impotence, and such.”

Jamie nodded somberly.

“But then the 1960s came around, and people began using them for their own recreational uses…I saw quite a number of patients who didn’t know what the bloody hell they were doing. Ended up in the ER.”

Jamie’s bubbling laughter abruptly ceased at the idea of penile injury, and he laid a protective hand over his own member. “Are there…a lot of things like that? Then?”

“Sex toys? A couple. There was the beginning of a sexual revolution during that time,” I replied, and I could see the questions already brewing behind Jamie’s eyes. Anticipated his response. “No, I never used any myself.”

Whether this was a comfort or a disappointment to him, I couldn’t tell, but he seemed suddenly forlorn over the notion of these differences between mankind’s past and future sexuality.

“Does this…excite you? Worry you?” I asked hesitantly, standing. “Would you rather bed me then than bed me now?”

“It’s just that,” Jamie said, smiling and pointing at the pages of  _Sacred Pleasure_ in my hand, “it  _is_ a wee different in your time than in mine.”

“That’s hardly proof,” I retorted. “20th century writers have just been forced to use their imagination. All those that came before…” I paused, squinting to read the jacket cover, “Ms. August, here, had used all the normal terms already. She had to get creative, I suppose.”

“Aye, ‘creative’ is a certain way of putting it, Sassenach. I dinna think she’s much succeeded, but I’ll grant Ms. August some credit for trying.”

“You mean ‘grasping my love jugs’ isn’t an accurate representation of all bedroom activities?”

“Nay, Sassenach. When I take ye, I dinna  _cleave_  ye like a piece of meat—though ye are tasty, if ye dinna mind me saying so.” He eyed my backside with appreciation, and I swerved away to obstruct his view.

“I object to your objectification of me, James Fraser,” I replied. “So tell me, oh ye of such highbrow literary taste—

“Sassenach,” he interrupted, getting to his feet with a provocativeness that spoke plainly of his intentions. Saunter notwithstanding, there was an equally blatant indication further south, and I gladly met him halfway. “Ye asked me, just now, which I’d prefer: 18th century sex or 20th century sex. Mind you, I’ve no’ had the pleasure of bedding a lassie in the 1900s, but…”

I laughed quietly, standing on my tiptoes to nip at his earlobe.

“I’ve been denied that privilege as well. No 20th century women ever made it to my bed, I’m afraid.”

For a man who once told me he’d spent the better part of an evening memorizing  _Fanny Hill_ , I was surprised to see the tips of his ears turn pink. Still, his mouth curled up at the side, and I felt his pulse, quick beneath my lips when I pressed them to his neck.

“ _Ach_. I didna mean _that_ , Sassenach. I only meant as I should ask you the same question. You being the expert, in such things as life, then and now.”

I broke away from him and offered a contemplative frown.

“Which is better, you ask…Sex in the 18th century or in the 20th?”

Jamie nodded, a current of expectation surging through him—a response, I thought, that showed a considerable (and much-deserved) amount of confidence in his sexual prowess.

Hoping to tease him, I took my chin in hand and began pacing back and forth.

“Such a quandary you’ve put me in, James Fraser. How will I ever choose?”

He rolled his eyes. A few more moments of half-hearted debate—and with the first seeds of doubt crossing Jamie’s face—I finally turned back.

“Dear me,” I said, smirking, “I’m still positively torn. Perhaps with a bit of persuasion…”

Quick to the bait, Jamie snaked his arm around my waist.

“I’ve been told I can be verra persuasive, Sassenach.” He pulled his body to mine, his hardness pressed in perfect demonstration against my thigh.

I, for one, was not wholly unsupportive of his methods.

“Oh,” I purred. “I can see that.”

“Can ye now?” Eyes gleaming with mischief, Jamie promptly dropped to his knees, hands making a gradual climb up shins, my thighs, until they stopped at my…

“Ahhh,” I moaned, relishing the feel of his fingers, moving in slow but deliberate strokes.

“Is an answer coming to ye yet?”

At the rate this was going, I wagered  _I_  would likely come before any coherent answer presented itself. Seeking balance, I ran my fingers through his hair and tugged.

“I think…I think I could be persuaded a little more.” I threw my head back and moaned a second time. “I’m a proper 20th century woman, after all. My opinions are hard-earned.”

I awaited a lewd joke, but Jamie was already pushing me onto the bed, advancing on his knees and lifting my skirts.

“Aye, and I’m a proper 18th century gentleman, Sassenach—I respect my lady’s needs.”

Grabbing me by the buttocks, he pulled me hard and bodily towards him, tongue finding the perfect spot.

I needed no further persuasion.

* * *

Sometime later, we lay in a gasping tangle of limbs. Had I any question as to the superiority of the 18th century, I was now confidently in favor of laces, bum rolls, and stockings.

But at the sight of  _Sacred Pleasure_  on the bedside table, I felt a pang of sympathy for its buxom heroine, who was the victim of more than Eloise August’s outrageous euphemisms.

The hell of it was: real love was beyond clever wordplay, creative positions, titillating toys, and forbidden locations. Never bound to a time or a place.

What the novelists could never describe was the feeling of my husband’s mouth on me, a butterfly’s touch against my dew-dropped skin. The understanding that, regardless of where or when we were, Jamie would be there, always. The century was hardly relevant—it was the hands that healed you, the lips that worshipped you, and the soul that met yours in the long, quiet hours of the night that truly mattered.

“D’ye really think there’s a difference?” he asked, breathless but returning to that same question.

“As long as it’s with you? No. Surely not.” I inhaled deeply, skin still tingling. “Jamie, that was…”

“Aye,” he said, laughing softly. “D’ye hear that, Sassenach? I dinna ken if that’s my heartbeat or yours, but it’ll wake the whole Ridge soon enough.”

I rolled towards him, seeking the sureness of solid flesh, as I found my footing not in our bedroom or by the height of the moon, but through Jamie’s heat next to mine. I rested my head against him, the synchronized rise and fall of our chests lulling me towards a satiated sleep.

“My heart or yours?” I mumbled, nuzzling his shoulder. “Is there a difference?”

I felt him smile into my hair.

“Nay,” he whispered. “Surely not.”


End file.
